Shrewsbury Flaxmill Maltings

by Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios

Client Historic England

Awards RIBA West Midlands Award 2024, RIBA West Midlands Client of the Year 2024, RIBA West Midlands Project Architect of the Year 2024, RIBA West Midlands Conservation Award 2024, and RIBA West Midlands Building of the Year 2024 (sponsored by EH Smith)

The brief for this project called for an exemplar of sustainable refurbishment to support the next 100 years of use for a building with a particularly innovative design heritage.

Opened as a flaxmill in 1797, it was the world’s first iron-frame building and has been described as the ‘grandparent of skyscrapers’. Its combination of cast iron beams and columns, brick arches, and cast iron ties made its construction fireproof, while large windows admitted natural light for its numerous employees. A century later, it was converted into a maltings through a second state-of-the-art design, with windows either blocked up or made smaller, boiler houses demolished, a timber hoist and new tower added, and a large kiln built.

Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios have conserved the enduring elements of both uses to provide four floors of flexible working space, while cleverly weaving in a contemporary layer to accommodate a visitor centre and café.

Read the full citation from the RIBA Awards Jury on RIBA Journal.

Contractor Croft Building and Conservation

Structural Engineer AKT II

Civil Engineer AKT II

Project Management Historic England

Environmental / M&E Engineer E3 Consulting Engineers

Landscape Architect LT Studio

Quantity Surveyor / Cost Consultant Gleeds

Ecological Middlemarch Environmental

Catering Cooper 8

Acoustic Engineer ION Acoustics

Interpretation Mather & Co